


Halfway

by ViktoriaSpeaks



Category: Original Work
Genre: 500 Words Challenge, Drabble, Gen, Slice of Life, Wordcount: 100-500
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-18 19:28:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14220150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViktoriaSpeaks/pseuds/ViktoriaSpeaks
Summary: 500 word slice-of-life drabble.





	Halfway

The clock on the wall is four minutes slow, ignored both morning and evening for opposing reasons but close enough to the present to still be considered useful. There’s a bird, twittering away somewhere unseen, hidden amidst rustling leaves that cling with a newly birthed determination to semi-bare branches dotted with buds and the sparsity of reoccurring life. The wind that flutters through them is born as much by the endlessly passing vehicles as it is from nature itself, a surging push of invisible force which threatens to knock the precarious new blossoms from their perch before their time. A truck joins the masses on occasion, burdened with lumber or kitchen tiles or junk picked up by those who make the castoffs of others their business with screeching horn and garbled loudspeaker. 

The traffic noise is little more than an unwelcome distraction, drowning out the murmur of a digital radio and distorting whatever excuse masquerading as music is playing at the time, or the incessant burble of forgettable midday presenters. There’s a murmur of conversation around the office space, some quiet enough to be frustrating as it lingers just on the edge of audible, others loud enough that even the traffic din itself seems a welcome respite from an unwanted conversation for each third wheel.

There’s a grinding clank from the kitchen, as some poor soul risks angering the centuries-old coffee machine, losing their battle with the appliance and having to spend the remainder of their afternoon attempting to fix it lest they incur the wrath of their caffeine-deprived manager. It sputters and dies, earning a low curse from the victim and a nervous laugh from those close enough to hear as, this time at least, they are not the unfortunate ones. A phone pierces through the too-still air somewhere across the room and is promptly ignored, less important than the page or the screen in that moment as it screams its distress and, after an excessive volume of pandemonium, grows silent upon the desk.

Sunlight streams through partly opened blinds, tracks of pale light stretching their fingers as far as they can reach, a temporary sprinkling of warmth to accompany the spring chill dragged in by an open window. Slatted fabric wobbles and shifts in the seasonal breeze, an illusory barrier between inside and out that successfully mimics the solid finality of prison bars. Cloth in place of metal, it is no less effective; a voluntary prison for the masses between nine and five each day built from a loathing necessity. The clock ticks lunch time, and a community of unlikely strangers forced together over time shares an internal cheer for _halfway there_. Halfway from last weekend, halfway to next, those priceless two days spent dreading the rapidly approaching Monday and trying to pretend that the previous five days were worth it, as the next five will be.

Twenty hours down, twenty more to go, and the clock ticks forever on in an unending circle of senselessness and unspoken displeasure.


End file.
